Not only was Kim Lefwich born at Medical Center Hospital but she has made the hospital her home, so to speak.
Lefwich was recently named chief nursing officer and has been at MCH for 27 years.
She went to Odessa College and graduated with her associate degree in nursing in 1997. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing in 2000 and her master’s degree in nursing, both from Texas Tech University, in 2006. Lefwich topped it off with a doctorate in leadership and management from Capella University in 2013.
Lefwich said MCH is the only hospital she has ever worked for. She started as a licensed vocational nurse in pediatrics on the night shift and rose through the ranks to become associate chief nursing officer before becoming CNO.
Becoming chief nursing officer wasn’t a specific goal, but as Lefwich grew in her career and education, CNO was the path she embarked on.
In college, like most young people, she wasn’t sure what profession to choose. Her mother suggested becoming a nurse and said Lefwich would be good at it.
“And there we went, that’s what led me into it. … That’s what I tell some of the new orientees is you just never know what’s going to take you. I enjoy every minute of it, so maybe my mom saw something that I didn’t,” Lefwich said.
Over the years, she has worked in all areas of maternal child care, nursing education, and medical telemetry on 7 Central, which became the Texas Tech unit and medical oncology.
“It was completely out of my comfort zone because I was used to moms and babies and NICU babies, so that was offered to me. I took that over and then in 2016, I also took over medical oncology and I was the director of both of those units. I did that until 2019, and then in 2019, I became the associate chief nursing officer,” Lefwich said.
She started with eight-hour shifts, but that was converted to 12-hour shifts, which was easy in her 20s.
As CNO, Lefwich has oversight of all things nursing and anything that is patient related.
“It’s not only budget and initiatives. We’re on a magnet journey so that is a big component of it right now. If you don’t know what our magnet journey is, it’s a kind of a certification of excellence for what we do as far as nursing and really as a health system as a whole. … We have a lot of quality indicators in nursing. What that means is (a) decrease in our surgical site infections; no central line infections. We want to have good outcomes and no falls, that kind of thing so anything patient related. … What the magnet journey does for us is it kind of accumulates all that and gets us to gather our data and tell our stories of how we met that metric. If we don’t have any falls, that’s amazing. How did you accomplish that? It’s kind of like an excellence in nursing journey. I collaborate with the rest of the (executive) team, whether it’s the COO, the CEO, we work to improve the organization as a whole and as a team,” Lefwich said.
“I’m no longer just focused on nursing (but) how does nursing integrate with the rest of the organization as far as with our other support areas whether it’s housekeeping, engineering and how do we all support each other to make this place function and we get through day to day,” she added.
Lefwich replaces Christin Abbott-Timmons as CNO. She noted that being associate CNO has made it easier to be Chief Nursing Officer. Every bit of her career has been a stair step to her current job.
She didn’t plan to become CNO when she was in nursing school.
“You grow at each level and you move to the next and you learn something … I don’t know everything. That’s why I have a bunch of people under me supporting me. Each thing that I’ve done in my career has added to my knowledge to get me through in this … Being here for 27 years has been, I think, a big support of me being CNO because you learn the culture, the people, the physicians, how things function,” Lefwich said.
Her first year in this role, she said, is about reestablishing the hospital’s foundation post-COVID.
“We got through the whole survival of being a nurse and now it’s getting back to our basics and getting back to our patient care. … What we do at the bedside is our foundation … From there, we will focus on other initiatives. I’d like to see our maternal service line grow. Month over month, we are having more and more deliveries … (That) is a project of mine. So that’s one thing I’d like to see in my tenure. We’ve grown it so much, but we have so much further …,” Lefwich said.
She added that she and the new Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Meredith Hulsey, have a fantastic working relationship. They’d like to translate that into building relationships with physicians and nurses to achieve better patient care and a better organization.
Filling nursing vacancies is always a challenge, as well. There are currently 70 open nursing positions, which is down quite a bit. MCH was well into the hundreds during COVID. Lefwich said they have had people come back.
“We have some great nursing schools around here. I think that nursing as a whole has become a more demanding field. Our patients are definitely sicker than they were when I started, by leaps and bounds … They have much more comorbidities. … This is a county hospital, so we focus on the unfunded and getting them the care and treatment that they need is always going to be a challenge. But we rise to the occasion around here. We take care of everyone. It’s difficult in the demands of people in their care and what they expect. It also reflects back on the bedside. Nursing is not an easy profession. It’s an extremely rewarding profession, for sure. I love every minute of it, but it is very demanding. If you want to just hang out, it’s not that kind of a job at all,” Lefwich said.
There are many factors that go into why patients are sicker. Weight is an issue as it can lead to high blood pressure and diabetes.
“All of those things just branch out into heart disease. It’s like one thing just dominoes into the other. I can’t say I’m a super example of this, but we have to get up and move and exercise and eat right. It’s just all those foundational things. And when you don’t, you’re going to have health issues. Our society is becoming very fast moving … Everybody is on the move and there are more demands on (everybody). It doesn’t even mean just nursing. … We want the quick fixes for everything. That includes some of our health choices. That reflects back here when we have them admitted to the hospital. We’re seeing a lot of younger people with heart disease and high blood pressure and diabetes,” Lefwich said.
There’s a reason now why people are in the hospital.
“There’s a lot we need to do to get patients out quicker, so … upon admitting you to the hospital, we’re trying to figure out on the day of your admission what do we need to support you outside of here to make sure that you don’t return; not because we don’t want you back but we want you to be healthy on the outside and have other resources to make you successful,” Lefwich said.
The hospital recently had a successful pop-up job fair, which attracted four phlebotomists, and has plans to get back into the community. There is a job fair coming up March 29 at George H.W. Bush New Tech Odessa and she said Midland ISD also has reached out.
“We’re getting back into the community and letting everyone know some of the draws and options that we have to come to work here,” Lefwich said.
Lefwich is married to Chris Tovar, MCH ProCare divisional director.
CEO/President Russell Tippin said Lefwich is synonymous with MCH.
“She has spent her entire career here … at MCH. You would be hard-pressed to find someone more qualified and more deserving of the role of Chief Nursing Officer than Kim. She cares about this place. She cares about Odessa. And most importantly, she cares about the people of West Texas,” Tippin said in an email.
